Otherworlds

A strange admission for someone of my long tenure in the worlds of fantasy and science fiction, but I’d never actually read Robert E Howard’s Conan stories before. I know they’re almost archetypal examples of the genre but for some reason I’d never got round to picking them up. That changed recently, when I bought the Audiobook “ Conan the Cimmerian Barbarian” which contains every one of Howard’s tales of the black haired barbarian that was published in Weird Tales magazine. Thirty five hours long and I enjoyed every moment. Consisting of a number of short stories and some novellas the canon covers episodes from the titular hero’s life, ranging from stories of desperate heists to cover his penury to intrigues in the throne rooms of great empires. In contrast to most of the fantasy works I’ve read these tales were tightly focused narratives of adventure, not epic feats of worldbuilding and exploration. I have to say that I am more likely to return to Conan’s world for entertainment